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Reimagining Museums with Latin America Leading the Way

Museum 2.0

Courageous speakers from dozens of countries described bold, participatory projects. El Museo Reimaginado is a collaborative effort of museum professionals in North and South America to explore museums' potential as community catalysts. I find North American museums to be risk-averse. Pioneers of communitario museums.

Museum 40
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Is it OK to Smash That? The Complications of Living Art Museums

Museum 2.0

Every day for the past two months, a man has entered the largest gallery in my museum. It also complicates the question of what is acceptable in a museum. If an artist can come into a museum and smash stuff, what does that tell visitors? It is not acceptable to walk into a museum and destroy another artist''s work of art.

Museum 50
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Museum Photo Policies Should Be as Open as Possible

Museum 2.0

I'm working on a section of my book about sharing social objects and am writing about the most common way that visitors share their object experiences in museums: through photographs. Conservation: Objects may be damaged by flash photography. Yes, some people (especially vocal museum staff!) But what about visitors?

Museum 54
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Do You Empower People to Take Action? Thoughts on Zoos and Charity:Water

Museum 2.0

I had a vague sense of how conservation fit into their educational missions, but I didn''t realize the extent of the direct advocacy and activism happening every day. In museums (and zoos), we frequently stop the conversation with visitors when it comes to action--especially political action.

Action 46
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The Power of Symbolic Participation: A Story from the Skirball

Museum 2.0

Museums have been grappling with this question for years ( here's a 2007 roundup of such projects ), most aggressively in zoos and natural history museums where staff hope to inspire conservation and in history/concept museums that focus on civic engagement and activism. No small task for a museum exhibition.

Story 47
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AAM Recap: Slides, Observations, and Object Fetishism

Museum 2.0

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

Slides 20
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Making Participatory Processes Visible to Visitors

Museum 2.0

In many cases, once the final project is launched, it's hard to detect the participatory touch. The exhibition or program is of high quality, and from the visitor perspective, it may look like museum as usual. Not every participatory process has to scream "look at me!" In some ways, this is a good thing.